Powder metallurgy applied rapid heating to sintering starting year 1900. Since 1970 the study has intensified. Now rapid sintering concepts embrace a spectrum of options ranging from dunk cycles to microwave, induction, exothermic, electric field, and spark approaches. Most of the efforts are targeting reduced microstructure coarsening during sintering, although reduced material decomposition is another common goal. The efforts are impressive for simple shapes and success metrics such a small grain size after densification. Several barriers need to be removed prior to application in powder metallurgy commercial sintering. Rapid heating research needs to focus on significant property gains, accurate product dimensions, and lower costs. So far each property gain obtained with rapid heating is matched by traditional sintering and composition changes. Several examples are cited to show the goals for the next round of innovations.

Ultra-fine zirconium carbide (ZrC) powder with nano-sized primary particles was synthesized by the carbothermal reduction method by using nano-sized and nano-sized graphite powders mixture. The synthesized ZrC powder was well dispersed after simple milling process. After heat-treatment at for 2 h under vacuum, ultra-fine ZrC powder agglomerates (average size, ) were facilely obtained with rounded particle shape and particle size of ~200 nm. Ultra-fine ZrC powder with an average particle size of 316 nm was obtained after ball milling process in a planetary mill for 30 minutes from the agglomerated ZrC powder.

In this study, the microstructure and valuable metals dissolution properties of PDP waste panel powders were investigated as a function of milling parameters such as ball diameter size, milling time, and rotational speed during high-energy milling process. The complete refinement of powder could achieved at the ball diameter size of 5 mm due to sufficient impact energy and the number of collisions. With increasing milling time, the average particle size was rapidly decreased until the first 30 seconds, then decreased gradually about at 3 minutes and finally, increased with presence of agglomerated particles of at 5 minutes. Although there was no significant difference on the size of the particle according to the rotational speed from 900 to 1,100 rpm, the total valuable metals dissolution amount was most excellent at 1,100 rpm. As a result, the best milling conditions for maximum dissolving amount of valuable metals (Mg: 375 ppm, Ag 135 ppm, In: 17 ppm) in this research were achieved with 5 mm of ball diameter size, 3min of milling time, and 1,100 rpm of rotational speed.

In the DBC (direct bonding of copper) process the oxygen partial pressure surrounding the AlN/Cu bonding pairs has been controlled by Ar gas mixed with oxygen. However, the direct bonding of Cu with sound interface and good adhesion strength is complicated process due to the difficulty in the exact control of oxygen partial pressure by using Ar gas. In this study, we have utilized the in-situ equilibrium established during the reaction of + 1/2 by placing powder bed of CuO or around the Cu/AlN bonding pair at . The adhesion strength was relatively better in case of using CuO powder than when powder was used. Microstructural analysis by optical microscopy and XRD revealed that the interface of bonding pair was composed of , Cu and small amount of CuO phase. Thus, it is explained that the good adhesion between Cu and AlN is attributed to the wetting of eutectic liquid formed by reaction of Cu and .

This study is carried out to develop the new process for the fabrication of ultra-fine electrodes on the flexible substrates using superhydrophobic effect. A facile method was developed to form the ultra-fine trenches on the flexible substrates treated by plasma etching and to print the fine metal electrodes using conductive nano-ink. Various plasma etching conditions were investigated for the hydrophobic surface treatment of flexible polyimide (PI) films. The micro-trench on the hydrophobic PI film fabricated under optimized conditions was obtained by mechanical scratching, which gave the hydrophilic property only to the trench area. Finally, the patterning by selective deposition of ink materials was performed using the conductive silver nano-ink. The interface between the conductive nanoparticles and the flexible substrates were characterized by scanning electron microscope. The increase of the sintering temperature and metal concentration of ink caused the reduction of electrical resistance. The sintering temperature lower than resulted in good interfacial bonding between Ag electrode and PI film substrate.

Magnetic and dielectric properties of rubber composites are controlled by using two kinds of high-permeability metal particles with different electrical conductivity (Sendust, Permalloy), and their effect on microwave absorbance has been investigated, focusing on the quasi-microwave frequency band (0.8-2 GHz). Noise absorbing sheets are composite materials of magnetic flake particles of high aspect ratio dispersed in polymer matrix with various filler amount of 80-90 wt.%. The frequency dispersion and magnitude of complex permeability is almost the same for Sendust and Permalloy composite specimens. However, the complex permittivity of the Permalloy composite (, ) is much greater than that of Sendust composite (, ). Due to the large dielectric permittivity of Permalloy composite, the absorbing band is shifted to lower frequency region. However, the investigation of impedance matching reveals that the magnetic permeability is still small to satisfy the zero-reflected condition at the quasi-microwave frequency band, resulting in a small microwave absorbance lower than 10 dB.

In this paper we have studied the effect of water droplet size on nano-particle size distribution using SMPS(Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer)system. It can be seen that the unknown peak at >100 nm was caused by water droplets which did not dry completely when DI water was used as a solvent in the SMPS system. Therefore, it is important to dry water droplets generated from atomizer in the SMPS system when measuring the particle size distribution using less than 100 nm nano-particles in diameter. From this study, It can be concluded that the napion was a useful material as dryer ones and using EAG(Electro Aerosol Generator) as a particle generator was the most effective in reducing the effect of water droplets.

The quartz glasses were prepared by fumed silica powders sintering method at , , in air and the effect of sintering temperature on their properties were investigated. The X-ray diffraction pattern, the OH concentration, the light transmittance, the apparent porosity and the density were analyzed. The transparent quartz glass were obtained above . The OH-group and macroscopic pores were removed above and highest density and light transmittance were obtained at .

The microstructure evolution during sintering of the W-5 wt.%Cu nanocomposite powders was investigated for the purpose of developing a high density W-Cu alloy. The W-5 wt.%Cu nanopowder compact, fully-densified during sintering at 1623 K, revealed a homogeneous microstructure that consists of high contiguity structures of W-W grains and an interconnected Cu phase located along the edges of the W grains. The Vickers hardness of the sintered W-5 wt.%Cu specimen was Hv much higher than that ( Hv) of the conventional heavy alloy. This result is mostly due to the higher contiguity microstructure of the W grains compared to the conventional W heavy alloy.

(Y123) powders for the fabrication of bulk superconductors were synthesized by the powder reaction method using (99.9% purity), (99.75%) and CuO (99.9%) powders. The raw powders were weighed to the cation ratio of Y:Ba:Cu